


Asea

by soyforramen



Category: Archie Comics, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Bughead Drabble Challenge, F/M, Pirates, but make it pirate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:15:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24686740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soyforramen/pseuds/soyforramen
Summary: Jones had grown up on the sea; Elizabeth escaped to it.  (Or, a Bughead Drabble Challenge that got out of hand.)
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32
Collections: 7th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	Asea

The sea was a harsh mistress - fickle, stormy, and deadly if you weren’t careful. She would take your life as quickly as she took your heart. Never could man tame her, nor could he understand her, he could only pray that he stayed on her good side. She was also the best thing that had ever happened to Forsythe Jones the Third.

Employed at ten on a small trading sloop, sent to man the crows nest and work the rigging, he’d lost his heart to the open skies and lawless waves. By fifteen he’d learned enough to become a crewman, his gangly body’s reach a boon during rough storms. In his sixteenth year he, along with the rest of The Intrepid, had been pressed into British service for a war they neither knew nor cared about. And by eighteen he’d traded the British Naval Fleet’s canon and tack for the crew of The Whyte Wyrm. His shares were one one-hundredth of what it should have been, but Jones would have gladly worked for rum and plantains to get away from Admiral St. Clair’s savage rule. 

The Captain of the Wyrm took a strange liking to Jones, partially because they shared the same strange name and partially because Jones was a quick, eager study. An old, wizened drunkard too fond of the stories of his youth, F.P. had taken Jones under his wing and trained him in the manner of a second mate to the ire of the older crew. Yet none complained for F.P. fostered a camaraderie that the British Navy, despite all their ineffectual pomp and circumstance, could never hope to rival. 

Among the younger crew Jones found camaraderie of his own. Each had lived on the sea longer than they ever had on land and knew a ship better than themselves. So when the Wyrm sank due to the Captain’s error off the lagoon reefs of Bermuda, the younger crew staked a claim in their own future. 

Four years of hard work, scraping together their funds doing jobs for smugglers, merchants, and the occasional naive Lord who wanted the true ‘Treasure Island’ experience, had led to this moment. They’d managed to save enough to trade for an old merchant ship, tried and true, one that had weathered many a storm. Mr. Lodge had promised that this was a ship worthy of any seafaring man worth his salt. It was an offer too good to pass up for the quartet, and so Fangs had readily negotiated for her.

“Doesn’t it make ye want to weep?” Fangs asked. 

He clapped Jones on the shoulder and slid an arm around Toni’s waist. Sweet Pea grunted, but even he couldn’t hide his excitement. Standing on the dock the quartet gazed in marvel at the run down ship, it’s hide tattered by hastily filled canon holes and barnacles six inches deep, the sails eaten through by rats, and the mast standing only through a feat of tar, rope, and a strange aversion to gravity. 

Weep was perhaps too strong a word, but despite its tattered disposition, The Iconoclast was theirs. For once in their short, miserable lives they had something to their names. Their future was their own. To pirate or pillage, to trade or travel; the decision was theirs and theirs alone.

And the thought made Jones weak in the knees.

A brisk sea wind tickled the back of Elizabeth’s neck and she ran a hand across it to disperse the strange vulnerability she felt. Necessity required her hair to be shorn almost to her scalp, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel a pain of regret. The loss of her hair made her feel naked in a way the harsh wool of the trouser should have. The trousers, at least, facilitated her movement and helped her hide in plain sight. 

She walked down the docks to the next ship in port and was greeted by a leather faced man with a missing eye, the empty socket puckered and black. Elizabeth swallowed her revulsion and stepped up to the man with her chin high despite the shaking of her hands. The man chuckled at her bravado. He made an awful retching noise and spat up a glob at her feet. 

“Lookin’ fer werk?” he drawled, amused by her if his grin was anything to go by.

“Yes.” She winced at how high her voice sounded. She cleared her throat and did her best to flatten the pitch to a gravel that itched her throat. “Yes, I am.”

The man guffawed and winked lewdly as if he knew her secret. “We’re dry docked until the captain sobers up. Try the tavern off the square. Ask fer Fangs.”

She nodded a thanks and turned back towards the town. The man’s voice slowed her step and she turned back to him.

“They’re bastards, the whole lotta them,” he said. “I’d be careful around those curs if I were you, sir.”

Elizabeth scurried away, the man’s hacking laughter haunting her. She burrowed further into her coat. If she weren’t able to blend in as a man she’d be found out quickly and sold to the highest bidder, pressed into service at the local bar or brothel, or worse. Brought back to her mother and pressed into marriage.

It was easy enough to find the square in the bustling town. Finding the tavern containing a ‘Fangs’, however, was much harder. Almost every building around the square housed a tavern full of brawling, drunken men stinking of sweat, dirt, and rum, their companions ladies whose hard lives were etched in the lines around their eyes, skirts cut short above the knee. These were the places her peers whispered about, aghast at the sheer depravity and jealous of the unrestrained revelry. In all her life, Elizabeth never could have foretold this sort of people could be her saving grace.

It wasn’t until the fifth tavern that she had any luck. Behind the bar was a rough looking woman, her leather skin beaten by the sun and highlighted with rouge and tattoos. Elizabeth shouted above the din and the bartender nodded.

“But you din’t want a thing to do with them, laddie. Only greenhorns looking fer an early grave,” the woman cautioned.

Elizabeth bit her lip to keep from pleading. This was the third coastal town she’d been to and the first she’d found any hope of leaving Bermuda. With a sigh, the barkeep nodded towards the back corner of the room where a pair were holding court at a wooden table by the fireplace. Elizabeth nodded her thanks and picked her way through the rank crowd.

The large one of the pair, dark complected and scowling, gave her pause. He towered over his companion even while seated, his arms coursed through with muscles borne of fighting the sea. A black and blue sea snake coursed through waves drawn on his arms, its tail propelling the creature from one wrist to the other. Next to him sat a petite woman, her long, sun kissed hair strewn through with pink and purple ribbons. Kohl outlined her dark eyes and brightened her smile. They made an odd pair in this tavern full of old, sun-beaten men and women, both too young and new to have much experience.

She swallowed down her fear; Elizabeth hadn’t made it this far to let her own prejudices hold her back. It didn’t matter if they were young or old, experienced or not. All she needed was a ship that could take her away from this island as quickly as possible. 

“Fangs?” she asked in a wavering voice when she drew near.

The tall man sneered at her and crossed his arms, a threat that made the sea snake writhe along the inked sea. The woman peered at her in curiosity. Elizabeth drew her fingers into her palms to keep from rearranging the ill fitting clothes. Without the gloves she normally wore her nails bit into her skin and the pain reminded her why she was there.

“I heard you were looking to take on crew.”

The man snorted and waved her on, as dismissive a gesture as she’d ever seen at any of Lord Mantle’s dances. Elizabeth held her ground.

“Are you Fangs?” she repeated.

The woman, taking pity on her, shook her head. The ribbons danced, a hypnotic wave of color that rivaled any fashionable trend from London. 

“You just missed him. But I don’t think this is the crew for you,” she said kindly.

Elizabeth was stunned. Never before had she been denied anything; the daughter of a landed Baron - former Baron - she’d grown up with all manner of worldly creations at her feet. Anything her hearts desire had been done at once, unless it went against her mother’s wishes.

“And why not?”

The woman raised her eyebrows. “Have you ever been asea? Have you ever held on for your life while Poseidon crashed down around you, determined to take you for his own? Have you ever sat on deck for days on end while Helios does his best to make you believe you’re in a Maharaja’s palace? Have you ever -“ she glanced down at Elizabeth’s hands, pale and unblemished “-worked a day in your life?”

Fury ran up Elizabeth’s chest into her face; no one dared to speak to her in this way, especially not some commoner. Her nails bit deeper, drawing a bit of blood. She squeezed harder until the fury ebbed. That wasn’t her place anymore. She was, if nothing else, lower in status than the two in front of her and if she didn’t act with the proper etiquette she would quickly be found out.

“I’m willing to do whatever work you require.”

The tall man snorted and purposefully looked away from her. “Keep walking.”

“Are you Fangs?” Elizabeth challenged again.

“If I’m not?”

“I was told Fangs was hiring. If you aren’t Fangs -“

An arm was thrown over her shoulders and she stiffened at the overly familiar touch. The smell of rum, pomade, and a day spent in the sun overwhelmed her.

“You were looking fer me?”

Elizabeth turned her head a fraction to find a man with close cropped hair crowding her. “Fangs, I presume?”

He grinned. “Aye. And you are?”

“Eli-“ she caught herself, though not quick enough at the woman’s interested glance. “zar. Elizar Smith.”

“Well then Eli, what fate brings you our way?” Fangs said as he sat down at the table. He sloshed out a bottle of amber liquid into three waiting cups and pushed one towards her. Forgoing a cup, he drank deeply from the bottle.

Elizabeth - Elizar now, she supposed - pursed her lips. A farce done once was theater; a farce done twice was folly. 

“Work.”

Fangs looked her up and down, a mirror to what had just concluded. “Can you climb?”

“Yes. My father couldn’t keep me out of the cork trees he kept.”

“Can you follow orders?”

“I’ve been doing it all my life, I don’t see why I should stop now,” she said sourly, remembrances of all her mother’s chastising coming to mind.

Fangs and the woman laughed at her cheek. 

“Can you cook?”

Her mouth went dry. A woman of her station always had someone to cook for them, to clean and launder for them, but how hard could manual labor be? A bit of water, a bit of heat, and you have a meal; a bit of elbow grease, thread, and cloth and you have a sail. 

A lie, though, could not fall from her tongue. Regardless of her urgency, she’d heard too many stories from her brother of pirates killing their own, hanging them off the side of the deck and watching for sport as the sharks and eels and piranhas leapt to eat their crew. How easily they’d eat their own companions when food ran low, or how quick they were to draw guns over an insult. 

“No. I’m afraid I’ve never had the privilege.”

Fangs nodded at her honesty. He raised his glass in a toast that no one else joined. “We push off at dawn in two days. You’ll be paid a hundredth of anything we make, minus provisions.”

He held out his hand and Elizabeth shook it, ignoring his companions. Business concluded, Elizabeth stood and made a shaky exit. She escaped into the alley behind the tavern to catch her breath. Without lies or deception she managed to make her way in the world. Though she’d never had to do anything more taxing than a waltz with a suitor, she was determined to make this work. 

She had to, if she wanted to be free of this island she’d been brought to as a babe. The prospect of leaving the broken mess of her mother’s dreams behind; the shame of her sister; the anger of her father. It was almost too much to be denied it now.

The reality of it made her weak in the knees.


End file.
